EIF 26: Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 16/08/26

Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus: Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor), Gregory Batsleer (chorus director), Konstantin Krimmel (Don Giovanni), Clive Bayley (Il Commendatore), Louise Alder (Donna Anna), Giovanni Sala (Don Ottavio), Janai Brugger (Donna Elvira), Michael Sumuel (Leporello), William Thomas (Masetto), Hera Hyesang Park (Zerlina).

A packed Usher Hall bore witness to an evening of Mozartian magic, as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under conductor Maxim Emelyanychev delivered a magnificent one-night-only Don Giovanni for the 2026 Edinburgh International Festival. Thankfully, it can be reprised in all its glory on BBC Radio 3. 

This evening marked the fourth chapter in the SCO’s multi-year survey of Mozart’s major stage works in concert, continuing a historic orchestral lineage while stripping away theatrical paraphernalia to lay bare the score’s raw, symphonic momentum.

The attention to detail was exquisite – from thoughtful costumery which bridged concert performance and full theatrical aesthetics, right through to the movement of instruments on and off stage, the filigree orchestral fills, and the beautifully choreographed two-level stage movements and interactions.

Presented as a composite edition, this performance combined the relentless dramatic trajectory of the 1787 Prague premiere with the refined vocal additions Mozart composed for Vienna in 1788. The soloists all delivered at the top of their game, the women especially. From the Grand Circle, some of Giovanni (Konstantin Krimmel) and Leporello (Michael Sumuel) seemed a little muffled by the orchestral dynamics under Emelyanychev’s energised conducting from the keyboard. But they will both sound fabulous on the radio.

Clive Bayley, who sang the role of Il Commendatore in Aix-en-Provence last year, took over from the indisposed Brindley Sherratt for this performance commandingly. Among the many other vocal highlights was Janai Brugger’s heart-rending opening to “Ah, taci, ingiusto core!” (“Ah, be still, unjust heart!”) at the beginning of Act Two.  

Few works in the operatic canon hold a mirror to human contradictions quite like Don Giovanni. Formally designated a dramma giocoso – a “playful drama” – it fuses the slapstick of opera buffa with the high-stakes moral gravity of opera seria, creating a hybrid where laughter continually turns to ash.

At its core, the opera interrogates unchecked appetite, power, and transgression. The narrative follows a single chaotic day in the life of an unrepentant libertine whose relentless self-gratification leaves a trail of trauma. Yet Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte refuse to craft a simple villain. Giovanni possesses a vital, terrifying energy: a demonic charm that exposes the latent hypocrisies of society. He is a force of pure nature, unbound by human or divine law, whose refusal to repent even before certain damnation grants him a chilling grandeur.

Musically, the score is a triumph of structural drama. From the thunderous D-minor chords of the Overture – foreshadowing the stone Commendatore’s spectral return – to the polyrhythmic ballroom scene of Act I, Mozart uses key relationships and ensemble writing to propel the action.

The opera’s true significance lies in aligning entertainment with a refusal to offer easy comfort. When Giovanni is dragged to Hell by supernatural forces, the surviving characters assemble to sing a light-hearted moral. Yet the music leaves an undeniable void. Don Giovanni remains a radical masterpiece precisely because it confronts the abyss of absolute freedom, forcing us to reckon with the awful magnetism of evil even as justice prevails.